and the world has somehow shifted
by howlsatthemoon
Summary: "You, Rapunzel, need someone grounded, someone modest. You know, a guy like dashing, handsome, clever, brave Flynn Rider." / A collection of drabbles. Rapunzel/Eugene.
1. Rapunzel Fitzherbert

_Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing._

So my new biggest, deepest, darkest secret is: _Tangled is my most favoritest movie ever_. :3 Feel honored that you know. Feel very honored. So this is just going to be like a collection of drabbles. And this first one is super super super super fluffy. Be warned. I'm sorry. I'm still on a high from, "_You were my new dream._" Disney: Giving teenage girls unrealistic hopes for future romance since forever.

x

**and the world has somehow shifted.**

"Eugene!"

Her voice rings with the breeze, loud and sing-song. He blows a stray hair out of his face and lays on the bank of the river for a little while longer. He does like the deep shade of green her eyes get when she's all riled up.

"_Eu_-gene." He sits up straight now, but turns around gloriously slow. Her hands are on her waist, her brown hair slightly askew from the wind. With the curve of her hips cocked _just_ _so_, and the way her lips are still parted from the act of his name passing through them, he pinches his leg nonchalantly. _Nope. Not dreaming._

He throws her a wink before standing up and taking a step toward her. "You called, Princess?"

In spite of herself, her pink lips curve into a smile. "Don't make me use this, _Ryder_," she accuses, and holds up a black frying pan, thrusting it fearlessly at him. He puts his hands up in a surrender, his eyes wide and his stance suddenly stiffening. "That's right. I've got a frying pan and I'm not afraid to use it."

Flynn rolls his eyes, but doesn't move. "Watch where you point that thing," he tells her in a warning tone, never relaxing until she drops the pan at her side and dances toward him, her bare feet brushing against the grass below there feet so delicately it's almost as though she glides above the ground, never touching it at all, really. "What's on your mind, Blondie?" he asks as he wraps a protective arm around her waist, gently holding her close to him as they both turn to watch the river flow.

_It's really not a river at all_, Flynn muses, _but rather a man-made stream of water running underneath the bridge that the villagers had taken to referring to as a river. _Rapunzel leans into his side, and at the realization of her subconscious movement, looks up at him, innocent green eyes and the hint of a blush spread on her cheeks. She doesn't pull away.

_Screw it,_ he decides. _If I get to be with her like this forever, then let it be a river. _The sudden thought in his head makes his back tense. _Where'd that come from?_

"My m - mother told me that I'd start etiquette lessons next week," Rapunzel says suddenly, her gaze somewhere far away, embedded deep in the mountains hiding the East. "I'm going to learn to be a real princess, manners and ballroom dancing lessons and new books and everything. Even shoes." She makes the cutest face, her nose scrunched up and her lips puckered, as though she'd just eaten a lemon.

Flynn grins widely, and gives her side a sympathetic squeeze. "That what's got you down?" he asks. She slips out of his grasp easily, and then places her hands firmly on either side of his shoulder, pushing him down until they're both back into the sitting position he had been in earlier, when she had first found him. She curls up at his side, and when the wind blows hard enough, her light brown hair tickles the back of his neck.

"No," she admits, and nestles her head further into the crook of his neck. "My father said that, after a few months of etiquette lessons, I'll officially be an eligible princess. Meaning that other royalty that qualifies can, well, you know. _Court _me." She shrinks back a little, her fingers tugging at a dandelion by her toes.

Something builds up in the back of his throat. His voice sounds funny when he opens his mouth to speak. "Oh. _Oh_. _Ohhh_!" He pauses, his brow furrowing as a million different feelings flash through his mind. The air around them suddenly feels hot. "Wait, what?"

Rapunzel sighs. "People want to marry me, Eugene," she breathes, her expression scared. She bites down on her bottom lip and something inside him stirs.

He runs a hand through his hair, more out of anxiety than habit. "Well, can't blame them." He smirks, just to hide the panic that he's suddenly facing inside. "Flynn Ryder's not the only one who's got a thing for brunettes, apparently."

Her toes curl and uncurl on the ground. A strong gust of wind makes her shiver, and he pulls her closer without thinking. Her words sound so tiny when she opens her mouth to speak. "I don't _want_ to marry them," she complains.

Flynn presses a chaste kiss to the top of her head, closing his eyes as he braces himself for the answer. "Who _do _you want to marry, Rapunzel?"

She is quiet for a moment.

It seems to last forever, but looking back, the time had passed them so fast. Even if their own small world had frozen, the birds were still flapping their wings, the breeze was still blowing past, the Earth was still turning.

"I want to marry _you_," she confesses, finally. Her face is so pure, so open. He feels a surge of something akin to love, a warmth he'd never felt until she had appeared in his life, frying pan and all.

"Good," he chokes out when the shock wears off. "I was hoping you wouldn't get too attached to those other snobby princes and knights, you know. No one lays a hand on Flynn Ryder's girl." He smirks again, for good measure. "'Sides, royalty can get so _conceited_ these days. You, Rapunzel, need someone grounded, someone modest. You know, a guy like dashing, handsome, clever, brave Flynn Ryder." He winks.

Without warning, as her ecstatic face peers into his curiously, he feels two soft hands grip the sides of his face tenderly and then pull him toward her, their lips meeting sweetly for a few seconds before she pulls away, leaving him with his eyes still closed and his heart still pounding. "_I was hoping you'd say that_," she whispers, smiling. "I expect a ring. Nothing too flashy, but something that sparkles. And an actual proposal. Oh, and we've got to go tell the boys at the Snuggly Duckling as soon as it happens." She giggles, her face sheepish. "I promised the thugs they'd be the first to know if we got engaged. Those pub folks sure are perceptive." She begins to turn around, but she faces him just as quickly, as though just remembering something. "Oh, and _you'll_ be the one to inform my father, Eugene."

Spinning around on her heel gracefully, she strides away, picking up her frying pan as she leaves him still sitting on the grass in awe, the feeling of her lips on his lingering gloriously. He watches her as her form begins to disappear onto the bridge leading to the castle.

He touches his chest, the place where his heart should be, tentatively. He laughs out loud, mussing up his hair with his own hand as he feels its irregular beats, just to be sure.

"Rapunzel Fitzherbert," he says to himself, and winces. It's a mouthful. It's a little bit awkward-sounding, and not exactly what one would expect for a name for a princess. He grins anyway. For some reason, he prefers it to Rapunzel Ryder.

And then his eyes widen as he remembers Rapunzel's parting words. Flynn swallows, finding his mouth dry. How was he supposed to propose to the Princess if the King took his life first?


	2. Cheeseball

**cheeseball**

It's little things, at first.

Most of them are just tiny little behavioral problems that come with the psychological burden of being willingly imprisoned in one room for eighteen years. Things like talking with your mouth full and wincing when you squeeze calloused, petite feet into tight, plastic shoes. Nothing that the manners tutor can't tweak in a few lessons. He likes them, really, little things like that, but she's a princess now, and princesses must have perfect posture and know which fork to use for salad and proper topics to discuss when having lunch with the East Kingdom's royal family. He forgets she's a princess a lot of the time, during moments like when he took her out to dance in the rain for the first time and her eyes were so green in the midst of the showering mist pouring from above. He forgets that he's really not supposed to be here and that there are plenty who disapprove of his presence.

But then, there are also big things. You know, how like she burst into tears when she smelled a lilac flower strolling in the garden, and he had to hold her in his arms for ages before she calmed down and all the royal gardeners stared. Or like how sometimes she doesn't eat her dinner, but merely pushes around the food until the peas and potatoes and rice and chicken have all been rearranged and poked and sliced and she doesn't talk, and he misses the sound of her voice and ignores the fact that the Queen is staring at him staring at her. These are the things that Manners Tutor can't fix; these are the things he thinks of when he jolts awake in his bed one night, and then realizes the looming shadow is hers.

"Blondie?" he mutters, rubbing his gummy eyes until his vision stops blurring and focuses on her. She looks tiny, wearing an almost-see-through blue nightgown just past her thighs. Her eyelids are droopy and her hair is sticking up at odd angles. Her face is pink, and her eyes are puffy and bloodshot. "You all right?"

She swallows, hard, and steps forward. He glances at her feet and, just as he predicts, they are bare, her toes curling and uncurling in her anxiety. "I was wondering," she murmurs, "if I could sleep in your room tonight."

He blinks once, and then twice, and then thrice before responding. "Yeah, yeah," he says, shaking his head to lose the last few tugs of unconsciousness. He spreads out his left arm, pulls down the blanket, and pats the space next to him. "Plenty of room. Come on in." She smiles and obeys, crawling in and snuggling against his bare chest. Her fingers, ice cold, splay across his pectorals in a fan. He shivers, more out of the intimate gesture than the freezing state of her hand.

"I had a nightmare," she admits, her voice soft. She closes her eyes, her eyelashes so long they brush her cheeks, intermingling with her freckles for a second before she opens them again to reveal jade.

He sucks in a long breath, and then pulls her closer to him. When she's flush against his body and she sighs in comfort, he pulls the blanket back over them, warmth settling over his skin. "What was it about?" he asks.

He's not sure he wants to know, to be honest. She has had nightmares since moving into the castle, he knows, but not how often. She's come to his room in the dark with her skimpy nightgown and her cold bare feet three times, twice simply shaken, but once with red rimming her eyes and tear tracks down her cheeks. She never tells him what they're like, only that they're full of darkness and loneliness and she wakes up screaming, _always_. He doesn't like the sound of her scream, because it reminds him of broken worlds and hopelessness and the feeling in his gut when he thinks he's going to lose her. That's the worst feeling in the world.

Rapunzel still hasn't answered. The silence thickens. He reaches out with his broad hand and smoothes back her hair so she doesn't look so much like she's been electrocuted. "_Tell _me, Rapunzel," he whispers.

She looks up at him. There is so much innocence in her eyes that it makes him feel sick and lovely at once. He feels sick because she is so much _better _than him. Her energy and enthusiasm and gratitude for everything that so many take for granted gives him this twisty feeling at the bottom of his stomach that makes him feel like he doesn't deserve her, that while he loves her with everything he's got, there's probably somebody out there who's better for her than him. And yet he can't stand that thought, because he feels _lovely_ when he's around her, which also makes him feel sick but in a more tolerable way. The air around her smells like flowers and her lips pressed against his, there and then gone like a butterfly, tastes like fresh strawberries. Everything about her, everything, reminds him of the love he feels for her, and when he remembers he feels like a cheeseball for all this stupid emotion, because, well, the truth of the matter is, Eugene Fitzherbert is, indeed, a cheeseball.

She breathes in, slow and steady, and the hot breath that spreads onto his skin makes him bury his face into her air. His lips, close to her ear now, form words. "You can tell me," he reassures, and with that, the dam breaks.

She doesn't cry at first. "I don't think they like me," she confesses, and his face falls with the discovery of her insecurity. She continues quickly, as if she's afraid the words will swallow her up if she doesn't let them out not. "Whenever I'm around, people act all weird, and they're so careful and formal. And I try to talk to people and they call me Miss and Princess and Ma'am and all these other things and no one, _no one _calls me Rapunzel except you and I - I feel so _lonely_."

His voice is raspy, but soothing. "Shh, shh," he murmurs as he rubs circles across her trembling back.

"And Manners Tutor always finds something wrong with me," she goes on. "If I'm not forgetting that it's you and I, not you and me, then I'm curtseying wrong or slurping my soup or talking out of turn. Everything is so _different_, and I'm so afraid that I'm not a good princess and that _if_ I ever become Queen then I won't do as good and I'll ruin the kingdom or I'll be selfish or become ugly or make people sad and you'll leave again, or maybe you'll die, or maybe you'll realize what I'm like and fall in love with someone else." She's crying now, with heaving sobs and sniffles and deep breaths.

It is only now that he realizes just how much he had taken away from her with the chopping of her hair. He had taken away everything she had ever known, and there was no way to give it back. "You never told me what the nightmare was about," he reminds her, his sentence breaking in the middle when she lets out a low wail with the release of her secrets.

"It's the same thing every time, but it's still scary," she explains. "At first it's happy, and I always believe it's going to be a happy dream but it never is." He bites his lip, tucks a shaggy lock of hair behind her ear. "You and I are running through the village, and you buy me flowers and a cupcake and you braid the flowers into my hair and we share the cupcake and you have icing, all over your chin." She smiles at the memory, but it fades quickly. "And then all of a sudden I'm in the tower, with Mother. With _Gothel_. And for the longest time, I'm so afraid that you're not going to come, and that I'm going to die, but then you come and I'm so happy. But then you - you get stabbed. And there's all that blood. And I fight and I hold you and I try to heal you but I see the light go out from your eyes. And then I try to kiss you but you disappear. And then my tower and Gothel and Pascal and everything disappears, too, and there's nothing but black. And I call for Mother - the Queen, not Gothel - and Father, and then Pascal, and Maximus, but no one comes. And finally I call for you. And you come, but you look at me with the meanest look in your eyes, and you leave me and I chase you but you're fast. And then I scream so loud because wherever I look it's just black and before I wake up I always know that I'm completely and totally alone."

She finishes her story with a choked cry and she hides her face in his neck. He tugs her close and kisses her cheek and forgets to play Flynn Rider and, when the layers and the hiding and the masks are peeled off, it's just Eugene and Rapunzel, the story of a boy and a girl. "I'm sorry," he says genuinely, because it is what he is. "I am so, so sorry, Rapunzel."

Rapunzel sniffles and kisses his collarbone chastely. "Are you going to leave me?" she asks, not looking at him.

"I don't think I could if they tried to make me."

"Good."

"Don't ever feel like you have to be scared that I'm going to leave you. I should be scared that you're going to leave _me_."

She bites her lip, meeting his eyes. "All this feeling scared is silly. We should both just feel safe."

"Deal," he agrees. "I'll feel safe that you're staying put, and you'll feel safe that I'm staying put. Capisce?"

Her lips twist up in a delighted smile. "Capisce."

The light from the drawn curtains starts to peek through the cracks, but she is already falling into unconsciousness. "Hey, Rapunzel," he says, even though she's already half-asleep.

"Mmm?"

"I love you."

By this time, her eyelids have shut fully and her breathing has steadied, her chest falling up and down rhythmically. He watches her sleep, curled against his chest, her ice-block feet entangled with his. He has never felt more at peace.


End file.
